Overview

Yakuza Kiwami 2 is an action adventure/ beat em' up game that released on Steam, May 9, 2019. The game was developed by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, and published by SEGA. Yakuza Kiwami 2 was the 9^th mainline game to be released. The game is a remake of the original Yakuza 2 game that released back in December 7^th , 2006 in japan, and with a September 9^th , 2008 release in North America on the PS2.

Graphics

Yakuza Kiwami 2 was developed on an engine made by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio themselves called the Dragon Engine. This is was the second game in the series to use the Dragon Engine. The game has a considerate amount of graphical settings you can tune to your liking. These settings are Texture Quality/Filtering, Shadow Quality, Geometry Quality, Realtime Reflections, SSAO ambient occlusion, and Anti aliasing. You also have the option for a preset settings.

With today's standards of pc hardware, this game can run on modest pc's. The Minimum requirements for this game are a Intel Core i5-3470/AMD Ryzen 3 1200, Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB, and 4GB RAM. Meeting the minimum requirements allows you to run the game at Low settings, with 30fps, at 1080p with a 75% render scale as stated by the game.

Yakuza Kiwami 2 offers pretty good graphics. The Dragon Engine is a great modern engine used in the series since Yakuza 6. Compared to the previous engine, this brings enhanced lighting, shadows, textures, and a load of different other features. Like stated before Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a remake to Yakuza 2. Comparing both of the games, the visuals are a night and day different. Pretty obvious since its a remake of a PS2 game. The world looks stunning, bright lights everywhere. Pretty dense crowds of people, and seemliness transitions from outdoor to indoor locations. Pretty much no loading screens. You can be running through the streets of two of japan's larger red light districts, and never get tired of the scenery.

Sound

While having two of Japan's largest red light districts, Kamurocho and Sotenbori, to explore, they both have the same ambiance and background sounds. They both consist of heavy crowd chatters from the various large crowds of people that roam the streets, busy shops/restaurants/nightclubs around every corner, and the distant wail of sirens every once in a while.

I will never get tired of saying this, Yakuza Kiwami 2 has pretty amazing soundtracks that play. I will say this with pretty much every Yakuza/Like a Dragon game I review. So far Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio has never disappointed me regarding their soundtracks, this game is no different. The regular battle soundtracks, various boss battle soundtracks, and even the minigame soundtracks are all well done, and unique. A large portion of the soundtracks are completely brand new compared to the original. A very small percentage of the soundtracks from the original game actually were remade for this game.

One feature that stills hasn't disappeared from the series is Karaoke. For the most part its the same as the other games in the series. A rhythm minigame with the protagonist singing songs from various Japanese music artist. I will also add how well done the voice actors did when singing the song.

Addictiveness

I would say this game is definitely a game you will enjoy playing more than once. If you already enjoy beat em up games, you will definitely love Yakuza Kiwami 2. I'm sure if you're playing this game already you have played the previous games in the series. With the large amount of content this game offers you will stay hooked into this games for hours, and thats not including the story. I have put 48 hours into the game thus far. Thats including beating the game twice already. I never found myself bored of playing the game. You have various other game modes to play after beating the game. If you want, you have the option for new game plus.

I could see a lot of replayability coming from people going back to play the various substories, and minigames in the game that they missed out on if your main focus was just the story. If not that, it could be you wanting to test your skills with harder difficulty settings. Maybe even you wanting to 100% percent the game. Thats gonna be where the real fun begins. Good luck with Mahjong.

Story

The story was actually good. The original story line is mostly keep intact with some minor changes made. The game takes place in Kamurcho, and Sotenbori just one year after the events of the first game , taking place late 2006. The game focused on a single protagonist, Kiryu Kazuma. The legendary Dragon of Dojima and former 4^th Chairman of the Tojo Clan.

Spoilers!

One year after the events of Yakuza Kiwami Kiryu, and Haruka are visiting the graves of the friends and family kiryu has lost last year. Recalling some events that happen that lead to their tragic deaths, while glad to have Haruka with him. Shortly after the 5^th Chariman of the Tojo Clan, Yukio Terada shows to have a conversation with Kiryu, its regarding a potential war with the Omi Alliance. He wants Kiryu advice on how to avoid an all out war with them. Before Kiryu has chance to answer a group of hitmen shoot and hit Terada. You fight and defeat the hitmen until another group comes and hits Terada again this time severely wounding him. While being transported to the hospital, Terada gives Kiryu a letter instructing him to give the chairman of the Omi Alliance. The last hope to avoid going to war with the Omi Alliance.

Unlike the original games there is a extra story mode called Majima Saga. While i'm not gonna spoil it because of how short it is already, doing the saga first will give some context to the main story regarding Majima's whereabouts and current situation.

Depth

Yakuza Kiwami 2 offers a lot of content. With the game featuring two maps now you can explore a lot more compared to the first games. While also having larger amount of content from the two. You can vist visit various unique shops, and restaurants that carry a different assortments of helpful items or just enjoying healing up with a good meal. Between the two available maps you have a large number minigames you can enjoy outside the main story. I will list some ofthem below.

Batting Center, where you play a batting minigame with the goal of reaching a high score.

Golf, a golfing mingame

Karaoke, as explained before its a rhythm game featuring a bunch of songs from various japaense music artist

Mahjong and Shogi

Clud SEGA, with two acrades games available to play. Virtual-On, and Virtua Fighter 2.

Their are two more minigames that's fairly bigger than the others, one is Majima Construction. This mingame plays as kinda of a tower defense game. You set a team of employees to help defend majima construction from Realtor, and the Real Estate Kingpins who are trying to take them down. The Other is the Cabaret Club, more specifically you're competiting in a Cabaret Club Grand Prix. You run a carabret club and make sure its stays afolat. You have of them hostess that you can level up and design to meet the preference of most customers. You can also hire more if you want to. Each time you operate you must try to make as much money as possible.

Since the change to the Dragon Engine the combat ended up changing with it. Having the ability to change between fighting styles was removed. The combat initially felt more limited as you only had one default fighting style. Gone the days where you can land lightning fast attacks, and toss enemies like nothing just by simply switching styles. For the most part the combat in the game is not bad in this game. While still lacking, they have improved the combats fluidity, compared to Yakuza Kiwami which the combat felt a bit janky. Mostly due to the animations being reused from the original game.

The game changed up the XP system. Unlock predecessors which allowed xp in the game to utilized to unlock any skill in the game, they changed it to have 5 different color type of experience. This has the same function to allow to unlock many skills but now you need a certain number of each experience type to unlock them.

These experience types are, Strength (Red), Agility (Blue), Spirit (Yellow), Technique (Green), Charm (Purple).

The experience you get can unlock more than just fighting skills, and heat actions. They can improve base stats, and life skills

Base stats are four different stats you have in the game. Health, Attack, Defense, and Heat Gauge. The experience can be used to raise your base stats and help you during fights.

Life Skills are a set skills that help you gain more from general stats such as Sprint, Hunger Gauge, Tolerance, and EXP gain.

You learn more skills, or relearn old skills from Sotaro Komaki . He trains you throughout the game. From him you can relearn or learn new skills that can help you a lot in combat. The skills he teaches you are fairly powerful.

As like all the other games in the series you have a bunch substories scattered throughout the game. These server as side quest. Doing substories can help you gain experience and give you helpful items. They can even a pretty interesting plot outside the main story.

Diffculty

The difficulty settings are the same like every mainline yakuza game in the series. Easy, being the easiest difficulty for new players. Normal, if you like a nice balance between difficulties. Hard, if you want more of challenge throughout your playthrough. Legend, for most seasoned of players. That difficulty will put your skills and likely your patience to the test. Don't break anything.

You will find yourself in difficult situations regarding some boss fights in the game. Some bosses can just be difficult on their own despite what difficulty mode you're playing it. I have ran into a few bosses who were absolutely infuriating. Your best bet for moments like this is try to learn skills that can potentially counter them, or if you're like me, chug down some stamina x's.

Obtaining new skills is quite easy but will progressively get harder since it will start requirement more experience. Getting the experience need can be quite tedious. You can obtain experience through fights, substories, or miscellaneous task. Thats not mentioning the experience you get from the main story. You can also get a set of skills and heat action from Sotaro Komaki, but he doesn't make it easy. You will have to fight him on multiple occasions. He will get harder to defeat after each fight.

Lastly, as explained many times in other yakuza reviews. Amon Clan is the secret final boss of the game. They appear in about every game and serve to really push the players skills to the limit. You can say they're almost unfair at times because of their insane power. He is optional to fight so you never have to actually fight him unless you're going from achievement or completing the game.

Overall

As I said with each Yakuza/Like a Dragon game I reviewed so far, I found the game to be pretty good. The move to a new engine really made this game shine. I have so far put 48 hours into this game, across two playthroughs. I only have a few complaints from this game, mostly the combat being a bit lackluster compared the Yakuza Kiwami. Like I stated before this game is a remake to the original Yakuza 2. They did a great job remaking this game from the ground up. I hope this review helps you get into this amazing game series. Its really worth a try if you haven't.